Paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea (aka “PND”) episodes tends to occur a few hours after going to sleep. Each episode starts with a shortness of breath that eventually leads to a feeling of suffocation. The feeling expands until it jerks the person awake, leaving them gasping for air and their hearts pounding fast.
At first PND may seem unrelated to my problems at night, but it is scary how perfectly it explains things. All my nighttime seizures happen in the early morning hours, around 4:30am. They start with a period of trouble breathing that eventually expands into a full-body grand mal seizure. As far as I can tell, a PND attack causes a major shortage of blood flow to my brain, triggering my seizures.
One of my primary fixes for these nighttime seizures has been to get up and walk around every few hours. It just so happens that sitting up / walking around is one of the ways recommended to restore blood flow and prevent PND attacks; if PND truly is the trigger for my seizures, then it would explain why this fix has been so effective.
It would also explain why sometimes I have trouble breathing after wearing my ResMed n30i for long periods of time. It’s not that the CPAP mask slips into a bad position or that ResMed VAuto learns the wrong pressures; it’s simply a light onset of PND coming online. Finally, it would explain why the heart rate monitor on my watch shows a giant spike during my nighttime seizures, but not my daytime ones.
After I messaged her via Stanford MyHealth, neurologist Dr Walter put a small damper on my excitement when she claimed that PND can worsen the epilepsy, but cannot explain the root cause. Deep down, I know she is right. However, I can’t help but hope that eliminating PND will get rid of my nighttime seizures 99% of the time.
